A cool phone discovery

One of Vonage's best features is Anonymous Call Blocking, you never get calls from those who will not let you know who they are. It goes straight to a recording, with no voice-mail.

 

Google voice will let you record a specific message for anonymous or spam calls, and then hang up. This behavior can be applied to groups, thereby avoiding names like spam1, spam2 etc.

 

Big Bell uses ACR (Anonymous Call Rejection) which, of course, can be bypassed or spoofed by anyone with a three-digit IQ....or even a two digit IQ since I do it quite often when I'm testing a customer's line.

When my phone chirps (rings, hoots, or sings) I either recognize the number and answer, or I'll ignore the call with great gusto.
Like i-Thingys, Droids also have the ability to immediately put that caller (human or otherwise) into telecommunications purgatory, which is semi-effective but generally not worth the effort since people who bug other people for a living generally have a bank of numbers to outdial with.
It's like viruses. You can kill or block 99.something percent of them, but a sufficiently talented creep will always get in. If you lead a dull and uninteresting like like I do, then they'll go after more interesting prey.

I would not use my phone to automagically answer anonymous calls with a snarky message and then hang up on them! If the bots find out that the number that they just dialed goes to a real live human, then they'll be all over you like a pack of dogs on a three-legged cat.

They're like trolls and political zealots.
...best ignored.

 

My house phone has a growing list of numbers to ignore, it's around 30 at the moment, my cell phone isn't targeted.
Cell phone offers a blocking service (ATT) with a monthly fee, I'll pass

 

List companies sell various lists to telemarketing firms. Some examples are people who enjoy hunting, fishing, golfers, people who buy stuff over the phone. You're recent purchase of hunting pants online they sold your name as a hunting enthusiast.

If you get on one if these lists you may have to change your phone number.

I always suggest you go online and register in the do not call list. That cuts down the traffic.

If you do get a call ask them to drop you from the list or do not call. By law they must. However many if those requests fall on deaf ears.

For awhile I was getting car warranty calls on my cell in Spanish. Hilarious since I don't read, write or speak Spanish. If wasen't a live person just a dialer with a recorded message. That evidently stopped. It ticked me off since it occurred late at night and ate away my cell minutes. If I did a call back it was some random person who said they never called me. These guys are clever they Bot others phones to make calls and avoid firewalls, block requests, do not call requests etc.

I only suggest is that if anyone calls you never purchase anything or give your credit card info in the phone. It is most likely a criminal preying in the elderly and naive.

The elderly are often the victims of phone scammers and to embarrassed to tell family or friends.

One elderly lady purchased 100 cases of baby formula all delivered to her home and she has no infant children or grandchildren. She told police I was lonely and the lady spoke to me for an hour so I purchased her formula over 10 times a month. She was in the frequently buys over the phone list. Her son got her a new phone number unlisted and signed her up with the local senior citizen center so she can make friends. He also monitors her credit card transactions online daily.

 

The phone company we use offers a blocking service. Strangely, it doesn't seem to work on 1-800 numbers, which are the ones I want to block. We couldn't have policies that decrease phone profits, now could we?

 

Do you run an android or apple? Android has some pretty good call blocker apps that are free and work well, and will prevent you from having a contact list that is full of random phone numbers. I used one called "extreme call blocker" when I had my Samsung galaxy.

So far from what I have seen, there aren't any good call block apps for apple.

 

The problem with the block Apps is the callers are clever they use multiple outbound phone numbers to bypass the block. Automated dialers can serve up 250 calls per hour.

It will deter most but the determined callers from the Russian crime network will get through. Some if the biggest scams now is selling drug prescriptions fulfillment. The sting finds that the delivered prescriptions are not real medicine thus grandpas hypertension medicine is a sugar pill. Grandpa ordered it to save $. Many gave web sites that you register your name and phone number and the telemarketers start calling or buy mail order pharmacy buyers phone lists from list brokers.

It is smart to deal with local established businesses. Buyer beware

 

Other than adding a number to your contacts that calls all the time, the easiest method is probably to just reject the call. Less effort. If its important they will leave a message. They probably won't.

 

Believe it or not someone or multiple people you know have been the victim of fraud. In many cases the amount is negligible and they keep it to themselves to prevent embarrassment

 

Ugh I hate the political ones!! Not sure where you live, but here I unplug my home phone around election time. Living in a "battleground" state sucks if you hate spam calls.

 

I just let the home phone ring and the answering machine plays the message. I only answer my cell.

 

Most of our spam and scam calls come from overseas (mainly India, although they tell you they're called Chris Smith and they're calling from Melbourne). The caller ID just comes up as "overseas". And my parents, my sister, my clients, my staff and many of my friends live overseas (mainly in Britain, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, New Zealand, the US and Sweden). So I can't screen in the way most of you can.

If they're trying to sell me something, I tell them I'm on the do-not-call list, ask for their real name, ask for their company's name, and then threaten to report them.

But if they're crooks, and if I have time, I usually have some fun. The crooks here are usually the ones from "Windows Technical Support". I put on my sexy* voice, and say something like "Oooh, you sound nice. What are you wearing?", and then build it from there. The vulgar and suggestive Hindi slang that I picked up from friends in Britain in my youth often comes in handy too. As far as I'm concerned, they lost all their rights to privacy and respect when they started scamming old people over the phone. I don't do this to callers who are trying to sell me a new phone plan - just to the people who are actively trying to steal money from money.



*"Sexy" is not entirely accurate here, unless you have very weird taste. Kind of like a camp male Samantha from Sex And The City, with a sore throat.

 

My father-in-law is not stupid: he's got three PhDs, I think (it could be four), and is a lawyer, an architect and an engineer.

He fell for the scam where your computer freezes, and the screen says "Your computer has been locked by the Federal Police" (it's the FBI when you get the same scam in America) "for looking at illegal content. You must pay A$ 200 to have your computer unlocked - call this number." He asked me how to make the payment, which was lucky, so we managed to avoid it. I have my suspicions that, once they'd got his credit card number, he'd have lost rather more than that first $200.

 

I wonder if you can Geography block any calls from overseas but white list or allow the phone numbers you select ( friends and relatives).

In the USA much of the scams are transacted from overseas but somehow they show up as being called from the USA

 

Computer fishing is an art form and most of it conducted from Russia. I also had that occur and knew what it was immediately. I called Symantic who I have a Virus protection agreement with and they cleaned it up and blocked the IP address in my firewall thus no future problems from that IP. However these guys are in the hunt 24/7.

The virus protection now validates web sites for safety.